Gates
Rewiring the President-Elect's Brain
Dec 06, 2008 22:10
The New York Times reported Wednesday that our president-elect is now talking about withdrawing combat troops for Iraq within 16 months, “... with the understanding that it might be necessary—likely to be necessary—to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq.” (I haven’t the slightest idea what “potential training,” means within the context—or in any context—and would appreciate some enlightenment if a reader would like to comment. I suspect it didn’t mean anything, but served as a placeholder until his mind could catch up.)
We are now seeing in the result of an intense and concerted effort by the established agencies of the federal government, particularly the Pentagon, to infuse into the head of the incoming president and his closest advisors the worldview held by the permanent government. It is an indoctrination difficult to resist, in no small part because much of it is classified, which limits the ability of the president to tap sources of information outside the security establishment. George Bush, whose lack of curiosity has been commented on for many years, apparently saw little reason to question the official worldview of the neocons, even when it became obvious that much of their worldview was pure fantasy.
But for a president to properly do his job, he must be able to develop his own sources of information outside of the almost hermetic cocoon that is designed to envelop and protect him, not only from physical harm, but from whatever might interfere with the official streams of intelligence that are intended to reach the president thoroughly vetted. We know from bitter experience, however, that a president who relies exclusively on official intelligence places himself at the mercy of those who supply the intelligence, and that intelligence can far too often be filtered in such a way that his decisions are flawed, or even disastrous. A president must have independent sources of intelligence.
A president requires independent intelligence for two reasons: first, it gives him an accurate idea of how well his advisors and the agencies charged with gathering and vetting intelligence are performing. Barring an intelligence disaster, the only way to test one’s intelligence sources is with other sources of intelligence. Roosevelt often surprised his closest advisors with information of which they had just come to inform him. His friends around the nation and the world privately fed him news on a daily basis.
Second, government intelligence agencies are not infallible; they have institutional blind spots, sometimes for political reasons (Douglas Feith is a classic example), and sometimes for structural reasons, such as when management simply doesn’t believe a matter is important when it is actually critical. And then there is the unavoidable human tendency to tell the ruler what the speaker thinks the ruler wants to hear. An informal intelligence network can quietly inform the emperor about his new clothes when he might otherwise find out too late.
Owing to the ability of the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI to monitor communications worldwide, it has become considerably more difficult for any president to maintain unofficial communication with his own informal intelligence sources, but somehow the president must find a way. His advisors will be hesitant to shade the truth when they know he has ways of checking what they tell him, and thus his decisions are more likely to be based on reality.
We are now seeing in the result of an intense and concerted effort by the established agencies of the federal government, particularly the Pentagon, to infuse into the head of the incoming president and his closest advisors the worldview held by the permanent government. It is an indoctrination difficult to resist, in no small part because much of it is classified, which limits the ability of the president to tap sources of information outside the security establishment. George Bush, whose lack of curiosity has been commented on for many years, apparently saw little reason to question the official worldview of the neocons, even when it became obvious that much of their worldview was pure fantasy.
But for a president to properly do his job, he must be able to develop his own sources of information outside of the almost hermetic cocoon that is designed to envelop and protect him, not only from physical harm, but from whatever might interfere with the official streams of intelligence that are intended to reach the president thoroughly vetted. We know from bitter experience, however, that a president who relies exclusively on official intelligence places himself at the mercy of those who supply the intelligence, and that intelligence can far too often be filtered in such a way that his decisions are flawed, or even disastrous. A president must have independent sources of intelligence.
A president requires independent intelligence for two reasons: first, it gives him an accurate idea of how well his advisors and the agencies charged with gathering and vetting intelligence are performing. Barring an intelligence disaster, the only way to test one’s intelligence sources is with other sources of intelligence. Roosevelt often surprised his closest advisors with information of which they had just come to inform him. His friends around the nation and the world privately fed him news on a daily basis.
Second, government intelligence agencies are not infallible; they have institutional blind spots, sometimes for political reasons (Douglas Feith is a classic example), and sometimes for structural reasons, such as when management simply doesn’t believe a matter is important when it is actually critical. And then there is the unavoidable human tendency to tell the ruler what the speaker thinks the ruler wants to hear. An informal intelligence network can quietly inform the emperor about his new clothes when he might otherwise find out too late.
Owing to the ability of the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI to monitor communications worldwide, it has become considerably more difficult for any president to maintain unofficial communication with his own informal intelligence sources, but somehow the president must find a way. His advisors will be hesitant to shade the truth when they know he has ways of checking what they tell him, and thus his decisions are more likely to be based on reality.
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